For those devoted to this rock band's increasingly artistic gear, Gibbard's a bard spinning pop-song sonnets that cause such constituents of fandom to reel real deep in some crooning-along swooning induced by the lithe lyrics.

The only real problem with Hearts of Oak is that the band still can't make their less immediately compelling tracks sound as electric and urgent on record as they do when the Pharmacists tear up the stage.

Just like every other record Malkmus has been involved with, it doesn't feel like an album, doesn't feel like one whole work, doesn't feel focused, or of some specific intent. Pig Lib sounds rambling and goofy and slump-shouldered and half-assed and happened-upon and lazily comfortable with every step that it takes.

Tindersticks have always made music that conjures up smoke: songs that are elusive, wispy and ephemeral, sung by men with somewhat rough smokers' voices. With Waiting for the Moon, unfortunately, little remains once the smoke clears.

Up Above Is, in such, a gentle enough jam to work/non-work in an incidentalist sense; but compare it to folk that do this sort of gear with a fearsome seriousness -- like, most obviously, the Vibracathedral Orchestra -- and T&C come up as pale as a Midwestern mid-winter tan.

The set works like a spun-up set of carefully collated cuts, sequenced with stuck-tape-over-the-tabs-in-the-corners mix-tape affection that makes the whole seem like a sticky-sentimented sentimental love letter to the boys' record collections.